Monica

This is loosely adapted from this recipe suggested by the CSA. I omitted the bacon (of course), decided that they couldn't possibly have meant 3 quarts of broth (along with other liquids, to say nothing of the solids) for "8-10 servings", and used margarine instead of butter so it would be pareve. I also used the veggies I had on hand rather than their specific list.

So, in other words:

• half stick margarine
• 2 medium shallots and one medium red onion, chopped small
• 1 large clove garlic, chopped small
• several shakes dried basil, a few shakes dried red pepper, black pepper

Cook the above over medium heat until the vegetables are soft (~8 minutes), stirring often.

• 3 small carrots
• 1 small parsnip
• 1 rutabaga
• 1 small sweet potato
• 2 medium golden potatoes

Chop all that into reasonable sizes for eating out of a soup bowl, add to pot, cook another 5 minutes, stirring often.

• 15oz can vegetable broth (I was going to use a quart but didn't know if it'd fit in my pot; future me: it would have just fit in the nice new 3.5-quart pot I used)

Stir, cook on high until simmering.

• 25oz jar tomato sauce (this was from the farm; it's just tomatoes, apparently pureed; no other ingredients)
• 0.25 cup apple cider vinegar
• jar (12oz?) roasted red pepper slices

Add, reduce heat to low, cover (with a vent), cook 30 minutes.

We had it with hearty rye bread fresh and warm from the bread machine.

I took advantage of Dani being out of town to cook food he doesn't like but I do. There are lots of kinds of dal (dal means "lentils" in Hindi or Urdu). I based what I did on this recipe.

In a deep skillet, saute in hot olive oil over medium heat until onions are soft but not yet brown:

• 1 large sweet yellow onion, chopped
• ~3" ginger root, peeled and cut fine
• 1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic
• 3 red mini-peppers, chopped

Then stir in and cook while you chop tomatoes:

• ~1 teaspoon ground cumin
• ~1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• several shakes of dried red pepper flakes

Add:

• 4-5 small sweet tomatoes, diced (maybe a cup or so?)
• 1 bag frozen stir-fry vegetables, thawed (the cauliflower in the recipe I found sounds nice but I didn't have any)

Cook for a couple minutes, then add:

• 1 cup dried red lentils
• 2 cups vegetable broth

Bring to a boil, stir, then reduce heat and cover. Stir occasionally and add broth or water as needed. I needed another half-cup or so of liquid after about 10 minutes, and a bit more after another 10. Cook until done, about 30 minutes total.

Right before serving, stir in a few squirts of lime juice and some chopped cilantro. I had it over brown rice.

With rice, this made 5-6 meal-sized servings. (I made 1.5 cups (dry) rice.)

We recently had a pot-luck lunch at work. I was short of time, so had my slow-cooker do most of the work:

- 2 sweet yellow onions, diced
- 1 pound butternut squash, cubed (~ 0.5" cubes)
- 2 sweet potatoes (not yams), cubed
- 8oz bag frozen cauliflower
- 8oz bag frozen peas
- 15oz can chickpeas, drained
- 2 12oz jars Madras curry sauce (I used this)

Put all ingredients in slow-cooker and cook on high for 3 hours. Then add:

- 4 sturdy tomatoes (I used Romas), diced

Reduce heat to low for 8 hours or so. (I went to bed at this point.)

Eat straight or serve over rice. With fresh-baked naan is even better but not always practical.

We had friends over for dinner last night. The fish turned out really well, so best to write down what I did. :-)

Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Melt some butter. Take breadcrumbs and shredded Parmesan cheese, in a ratio of 2:1, and mix together with some garlic powder. Dredge orange roughy fillets in butter, then roll in the breadcrumb mixture (cover both sides) and place in a single layer on the baking sheet. Bake at 400F for 15-20 minutes, until the fish flakes, and if your oven heats unevenly like mine does, be sure to rotate the pan halfway through. (Note: orange roughy fillets are cut a little thicker than, say, tilapia, and it's a firmer fish. If substituting a different fish type, you may need to adjust the cooking time.)

This managed to hit the right balance of "unambiguously, fully cooked like whitefish should be" and "not overcooked and dry". I trust that the coating has a lot to do with that.

(I've previously tried using beaten egg in place of the butter. Googling led me to the butter clue and that worked better in terms of enough coating sticking to the fish. I'm not sure why that would be. It still ends up being a light coating, not like the overly-breaded fish that comes from the frozen-food section of the store.)

I served this with quinoa (cooked with a bit of olive oil) and acorn squash stuffed with diced apples and some butter and then baked, with Emerald Riesling (Mony Vineyards, Israel) to drink.

For the completists, dessert was pineapple upside-down cake (from a bakery).

There was a Halloween pot-luck at work today. Late last week we had a spectacular fridge purge -- things years past their expiration dates and quite a few "science experiments" and containers of green fuzzy...something. These ideas seemed like they should go together, so in a then-locked entry (to maintain the surprise) I asked for suggestions. Thanks to everybody who helped! That entry is now public.

I opted for "cottage-cheese salad way past its sell-by date" as closest to the fridge theme, though several other suggestions nicely fit a "green and/or fuzzy" theme in other ways. (I went for this one because it is clearly abnormal in its green-ness, unlike, say, gaucamole or kiwi.) You can't see it in the picture below, but I altered the sell-by date on the container from 2011 to 2001 -- turning the "1" into a "0" was the only thing I could do after failing to remove the existing ink with chemicals I had on hand. We have a rule that things in the fridge need to be labeled, so this morning I browsed our alumni wiki page to decide on a long-gone coworker to implicate. Ex-coworker, if you're out there, it was all in fun. :-)

The treatment was...evocative, so much so that for a while nobody else ate it. Eventually people got brave. Other offerings included cake with "glass shards" (made from sugar), a couple variations on fingers, a fruit salad with eyeballs, a greenish brain with red highlights (labeled as zombie food), and several comparatively-normal items. I consider it a success.

There is a post-script. A coworker pointed out that the person I implicated didn't work there in 2001. I knew that, but any food actually from 2001 would not have survived the office move in 2005. I was one of the people who prepared the fridges for that move; I know. So I had to choose among inaccuracies -- I could support a 2001 fridge deposit or a fridge deposit that could have occurred in our current location, and opted for the latter. If I'd been able to edit the date more effectively I could have done both. I don't think anybody was there in 2001, still there after the move, and gone soon after. Yes, I did over-think this. :-)

( photo )

Some coworkers declared tomorrow to be Wiener Wednesday, with an impromptu pot-luck revolving around hot dogs and things that go on them. Kashrut considerations would normally preclude that, but when someone declared the intention to bring veggie dogs (with suitable preparation), I decided to contribute some veggie chili to go with them. It went something like this:

Heat vegetable oil in a deep skillet. Chop a giant yellow onion and a red bell pepper ('cause green bell peppers are gross) and cook into submission, adding a few teaspoons of minced garlic from a jar. (Edit: Chop about 1.5 carrots small before giving up and toss that in too.) Add half a bag (~8oz) of fake-meat crumbles, half a can of green chiles, a tablespoon or so of chili powder, half that of cumin, and some oregano. Cook for a while, stirring occasionally. Wonder if this will be spicy enough; later learn not. Add a 15oz can of red kidney beans and another of black beans, both drained, and a 28oz can of diced tomatoes, not drained. Stir, turn heat down, cover, and eat unrelated dinner.

Examine mix and decide the liquid is too thin. Find a 6oz can of tomato paste and decide that'll be just the thing. Also add a little more chili powder and cumin (still not enough). Cover and simmer for another hour or so, after which the sauce is nicely thick. Decant into 3-quart (?) casserole for transport to work, taste, decide to write note to future self about spicing in the form of this journal entry. Nonetheless, results are tasty if subdued. Write journal entry.

This afternoon's barony meeting included a pie contest. Three categories were declared in advance: seasonal fruit, seasonal vegetable, and anything from a period source. Whimsy was also allowed, such as the geometrically-challenged rectangular apple dish. Until a few days ago I had been planning to enter a certain documentable apple/pear pie, but then the Cooks' Source thing happened and I figured that might be a popular choice. :-) (illadore is from our barony, though does not currently live here.) As it turned out, a fourth emergent category presented itself based on the entries: "stolen". :-) So I could have, but I didn't know that in advance so I instead skipped anything with apples and set out to experiment with pears.

Here's what I did, and I am not particularly fluent in dessert pies so I would definitely welcome feedback. (I was going to also make a savory one but discovered I was missing a key ingredient. Oops. Not that we wanted for pie to eat...)

Combine 1C sugar, about 2T ground ginger, and about 2T flour in a bowl. Peel and slice thinly six Bosc pears, and add to bowl. Stir until everything is distributed. Put filling into a 9" crust (deep-dish would have been better) and sprinkle the top with about a quarter cup of crystalized ginger (in very small pieces). Bake at 375 for about 50 minutes, covering the edges of the crust with foil for the first half.

I got the proportions of sugar, fruit, and flour from a modern recipe for apple pie. The pie was a little too juicy (some liquid spilled, too), so I needed more flour or less pear, I guess. But it's worth noting that the apple-pie recipe called for a top crust; I don't actually like pie crust all that much, so unless I'm redacting a period recipe that calls for it, I make my pies open. I don't know what effect that had on the juiciness.

I thought the pie was a little too sweet; next time I'll use no more than 3/4 cup of sugar.

I had expected the crystalized ginger to have more of an effect on the pie. And in fact, fresh out of the oven the little sample I baked alongside the pie was nicely gingery, but the full pie, cooled to room temperature, was not. Next time I'll mix the crystalized ginger in with the fruit.

This pie as I made it is parve. (I used a frozen pie crust that was also parve.) I wonder whether a little bit of butter in the filling would add to it (though then I'd have even more liquid on my hands).

Friends from my congregation invited me to their chavurah's seder Monday night. There were about 50 people there (largest group they've ever had). I hadn't known in advance that my friend would be leading it, so that was a nice touch. It was a warm, friendly seder, complete enough to be satisfying and expedient enough that the kids present weren't getting too antsy. There wasn't as much singing as I'd expected, but what there was was enthusiastic. It was a good experience.

New insight (reported by my friend, attributed to Rabbi Symons): we can view the four sons as the filling-out of a matrix (ok, he didn't say matrix) of wisdom and piety. The quiet son has neither. The simple one has piety but not wisdom. The rasha (evil son) has wisdom and no piety (he uses his wisdom to rebel). The wise son has both. The rabbis tend to do this sort of 2x2 mapping of attributes to types of Jews, so this is in that spirit.

For the first time (or maybe second?) our congregation offered to match people looking for seders with people who could take guests. (Before that everyone asked the rabbi, I think.) Matching for the first night was very successful. I requested a seder for the second night but it didn't happen -- but I didn't know that early enough to do something about it. So sigh. A second seder isn't necessary for me, but it's nice to do if I can, particularly if it's different in some way from the first. Someone asked on a mailing list tonight why Reform Jews would have second-night seders; what I wrote was: the first seder is to fulfill external obligations -- to God, to family, to those who can't/won't handle some of the content, etc.; the second seder is to fulfill internal obligations -- study, spiritual growth, etc. So next time I'm at home for Pesach I plan to hold my own second-night seder; it sounds like enough of my friends don't go to one regularly that they'd possibly be available to come to mine. (Whether they'd want to come is an open question, but it can't be answered now anyway so why worry?) I think next year we're going to Toronto, though, so probably not for two years.

Morning services on Tuesday went well. The crowd was smaller than it will be next week (seventh day) for Yizkor. Usually my rabbi asks me to read part of the holiday megillah (Song of Songs, for Pesach); I'm lousy at reading poetry, particularly translated poetry, so I'm glad he asked others to do so instead. (I'm always happy to read from Ruth or Kohelet.) Instead he gave me an aliya, which was nice -- I so rarely get to hear my Hebrew name used!

Foodies: my favorite brisket is made in a pan on the stove in tomato sauce and spices. (Simmer two hours, slice thinly against grain, simmer two more hours.) I don't have a suitable kosher-for-Pesach pan. Google suggests that I can cook a brisket in sauce in the oven to good effect; I would welcome specific suggestions that work well for you. The oven-cooked briskets I've had have been closer to the "roast + gravy" model than the "barbecue beef" model -- also good, but not the effect I'm looking for this time.

Omer: day 2. Haven't forgotten yet. :-)

15 most strange buildings in the world is bizarre. While it's not the strangest, I am fond of the library that looks like a shelf full of books.

Dani's comfort foods include shepherd's pie, which was not part of my upbringing. I've made the version from Cooking for Engineers a couple times, substituting margarine for the butter because of kashrut and beef for the lamb because of availability, but he says it's not quite right. I asked him to do some searching and he reports that everything that looks right involves milk or cheese, which is of course a problem. Do any of my kosher or lactose-intolerant readers have a favorite recipe?

A friend recently burned DVDs from some treasured old videotapes, but our DVD player won't play them. (The computers will.) Google tells me that this is a common problem, especially with older players. There are the competing standards of DVD+R and DVD-R; the documentation for our player mentions neither by name. (These discs are DVD+R.) This happened once before and I assumed a bad disc; now I suspect the problem is the player. We bought our DVD player, a region-free Sampo, when the first season of The West Wing was released in the UK, which was apparently 2002.

I could get this video adapter for my iBook for $19. There might be other benefits to that too, though streaming Hulu might not be one of them (video seems jumpy). Or it appears that region-free DVDs have come way down in price, so maybe we should replace our player. Maybe with this ($58 and I've heard of the manufacturer) or this ($40, no reviews, and never heard of the maker). These are the results of half an hour of surfing; if anyone reading this has opinions, I'd love to hear 'em.

Recently I've seen a few "bot" LJ accounts go by -- users that seem to subscribe to people at random but don't do anything else (so they're not, say, making harrassing comments), and then the accounts get nuked. The last one I got was Russian, as I gather many are. I don't really care if such accounts show up as subscribers, but I find myself wondering two things: what do they get out of it, and why do some folks get upset enough to get the accounts suspended? What am I missing?

Ok, foodies, help me out here. :-)

I have most of a loaf of not-very-good challah left over. (Not my usual brand.) I often turn stray ends of challah into bread crumbs, but I've got plenty right now. I could make french toast or grilled cheese sandwiches, but that won't use most of it before it turns green and fuzzy.

I understand that "bread pudding" is a common answer to this dilemma. I can certainly hunt up recipes, but if any of you have particular favorites, that'd be better than choosing randomly among plausible-sounding Google results. :-) And if you've got other suggestions for using leftover bread that doesn't rate just being bread, I'd love to hear 'em. (I'm not planning to cook any whole birds in the next couple weeks.)

I like the way this improvisation turned out. If I write it down, there's some chance I'll be able to repeat it.

Four-Cheese Pasta

1 pound medium pasta shells, cooked al dente
~2T butter
few splashes of heavy cream (0.25C?)
several shakes of oregano
~0.25C shredded sharp cheddar (all I had)
~0.5C shredded mozzerella
~0.25C shredded parmesian
8 thin slices aged swiss (~5oz)

Add butter to hot pasta and stir until melted. Stir in cream, then oregano and the shredded cheeses. When mixed well, put in two 8x8" metal pans. Top with sliced cheese and bake uncovered at 375 for 30 minutes (check after 20). The top should start to brown but not get too crunchy.

I used two pans because I'm going to freeze one of them. I don't see why this wouldn't work in one larger pan (9x13?).

I know that ricotta is conventional in dishes like this. I intended to use that, but it turned out ours was on the path to developing tool use and language skills, so I had to evict it from the fridge.

Dani forwarded me this interesting article about mustard and ketchup. It's long, but I found it worth reading. Basic question: why are there entire sections in the grocery store for mustard, but there are still only a few players for ketchup? (I'm not much of a ketchup person myself; I generally find it boring. For french fries or burgers or hot dogs, my condiment of choice is brown mustard. I've also been known to dip fries in barbeque sauce.)

When I last went fish shopping the person at the counter informed me that they no longer carry grouper (a versatile fish that I like to cook with), but that what they label as "basa" (not bass) is the same fish. Google tells me that both names are used for the same fish, so I guess this means they've changed their source and the sources used different labelling. My basa fillets were a little thinner than the grouper fillets I used to get, but otherwise it seems to be indistinguishable.

This was good: take basa fillets, put in a lightly-oiled casserole (I used olive oil) and drizzle oil on top, coat with "Auntie Arwen's fish blend" (assorted herbs, garlic, onion, I think paprika), bake at 425 for about 10 minutes, then add thinly-sliced havarti cheese on top and bake just until melted.

I went surfing for a recipe for cold cherry soup (not being satisfied with the one I know) and found something that mostly worked. (Dani has previously described a cherry soup with sour cream; the key word seems to be "Hungarian".) Boil water, pitted cherries, and sugar for a while until the cherries soften; in a bowl beat cream (if the cherries are sweet) or sour cream (if not) with a little flour, stir in some of the hot mixture, and then pour everything into the pot and simmer (don't boil). Chill well before serving. The flour's job, I presume, is to thicken the broth, but even though I beat it with the cream for a while, I got little globs of flour in the resulting soup. Maybe I used too much flour? (I had non-sour cherries, so I used cream. The recipe didn't specify the type of cream; I used heavy and will probably try light next time.)

Tonight after Shabbat Dani wanted to go to Longhorn, a steak house at the waterfront (don't know if that's a chain or a local instance). They have two non-shellfish fish dishes, both salmon. The grilled salmon was very good, and the steamed broccoli was tasty and not overcooked. The seasoned fries were reasonable, though I failed to procure brown mustard for them and had to settle for yellow. I didn't see anything vegetarian on the menu, but I like salmon so I'd definitely go there again.

But next time we'll sit at a table, not a booth. This isn't the first restaurant I've been to lately where the seats in the booths are really far from the table. In some (like Gullifty's), if I sit all the way back my feet don't touch the floor. So I end up having to sit on the front of the seat, with no back support at all. I'm short, but I don't think I'm farther out than one standard deviation. Are restaurants now planning booth layouts around very large people? (Ironically, the very large people I've had occasion to observe seem to prefer tables with chairs.)